Teeth, Loan and Trust Company, Consolidated: The Trylowsky Collection
to
Griffin Art Projects 1174 Welch Street, North Vancouver, British Columbia V7P 1B2
Eric Metcalfe, "Mural at Dr. Zenon Trylowsky's office," n. d.
mixed media
This exhibition highlights an impressive collection of art work acquired by Dr. Zenon Trylowsky over the past 25 years mainly through acts of bartering with artists for dental services at his Vancouver clinic. The exhibition also foregrounds his support of the independent curatorial platform Trapp Projects who for more than a decade used Trylowsky’s dental office as an alternative curatorial space. The exhibition title refers to a fake cheque made and signed by the French artist Marcel Duchamp in lieu of payment owed to his American dentist Dr. Tzank in 1919.
Marcel Duchamp Tzanck Check 1919
There are many ways and reasons to collect art. On December 3, 1919, unable to pay his American dentist Daniel Tzanck in cash, the artist Marcel Duchamp made and signed a fake cheque written in the amount of the 115 dollars that he had been billed. The significance of this false Teeth, Loan and Trust Company, Consolidated cheque may be measured both by the fact that the dentist accepted this original copy as payment and that Duchamp valued it so highly that he bought it back from him years later at an inflated price. The title of this artwork has a number of puns embedded in it. Not only does Duchamp ‘Thank” Dr. Tzanck with this work, but the spelling of “check” refers as much to a cheque as it alludes to Duchamp’s obsession with the game of chess.
Continuing in this tradition, Dr. Zenon Trylowsky opened his dental practice on the twelfth floor of the Vancouver Block Building at Granville and Georgia Street in 1996. From its inception, his practice stood out from your average dental office in its commitment to showcasing art by contemporary artists rather than decorating his office with kitsch posters of landscapes, animals or advertisements. With the exception of a few permanent installations (such as a mural by Dr. Brute aka Eric Metcalfe), Trylowsky changes his collection as it grows and evolves. Like Tzanck Check, the majority of work in Trylowsky’s collection was acquired through bartering — particularly beneficial for artists working independently without a dental plan.
In 1997, Trylowsky began collaborating with Patrik Andersson who that same year founded Trapp Projects, a curatorial platform initiated to introduce local and international artist to as wide an audience as possible while not being limited by the mandates of traditional exhibition spaces. Irregularly transforming his private office across the hall from his dental practice into Trylowsky Gallery, on numerous occasions we’ve been able to see exhibitions by either coming to openings or making an appointment with the dental office. Artists such as Myfanwy Macleod, Shannon Oksanen, Lotta Antonsson, Arni Haraldsson, Ian Skedd, Holly Ward, Claire Greenshaw, Tony Romano, Ron Terada and Jerry Allen all had important early solo or two-person exhibitions here.
The exhibition at the Griffin highlights a selection of works from this 20 year history. For the duration of this exhibition Patrik Andersson will also be curating a new exhibition of work at the dental practice to fill another ‘gap’ in this Teeth, Loan and Trust Company, Consolidated.
Some of the artists in the collection include:
John Anderson, Vikky Alexander, Jerry Allen, Lotta Antonsson, Roy Arden, Kim Kennedy Austin, Tim Barber, Tom Burrows, Neil Campbell, Lincoln Clarkes, Christos Dikeakos, Jamie Dolinko, Marcel Dzama, Mark Gilbert, Graham Gilmore, Rodney Graham, Adad Hannah, Cameron Kerr, Robert Kleyn, David Korty, Tim Lee, Robert Linsley, Attila Richard Lucacs, Kelly Lycan, Jason McLean, Al McWilliams, Mathew McWilliams, Myfanwy McLeod, Eric Metcalfe, Julie Morstad, Shannon Oksanen, Heather Passmore, Isabelle Pauwels, Ryan Quast, Tony Romano, Derek Root, Peter Schuyff, Ron Terada, Mia Thompsett, T&T (Tony Romano & Tyler Brett), Holly Ward, Neil Wedman, Brian White and Kelly Wood.